Email as private as snail mail rules US appeals court

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 20 June 2007 19:50

Your IT - Home IT

Once upon a time, citizens of the US and much of the western world could rely on their legal systems to protect the privacy of communications. However, email was deemed to be somehow less private than ordinary mail. That may have changed forever early this week as a result of a US court ruling.

A judiciary panel of the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled unanimously against the Federal Government's contention that it had the right to access personal emails stored with Internet service providers without a warrant. As far as the court was concerned, the content of emails is as private as a telephone conversation and unwarranted siezure of private emails violates the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution.

The news was roundly applauded by civil rights groups, including digital rights advocate, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which described the ruling as a landmark decision.

"Over the last 20 years, the government has routinely used the federal Stored Communications Act (SCA) to secretly obtain stored email from email service providers without a warrant. But today's ruling -- closely following the reasoning in an amicus brief filed the by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and other civil liberties groups -- found that the SCA violates the Fourth Amendment," an EFF statement read.

"Email users expect that their Hotmail and Gmail inboxes are just as private as their postal mail and their telephone calls," said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "The government tried to get around this common-sense conclusion, but the Constitution applies online as well as offline, as the court correctly found. That means that the government can't secretly seize your emails without a warrant."

As civil liberty groups applaud, however, law enforcement agencies are concerned that the ruling will make criminal investigations more difficult, including investigations into online fraud, terrorism and other criminal activities.

Without the ability to sieze emails from service providers without a warrant, the Government would not have been able to indict the owner of an online sales company Steven Warshak for allegedly defrauding banks and customers. The case led to the appeals court ruling after Warshak filed a lawsuit against the Government for violation of his Fourth Amendment rights.

If the court's ruling stands, investigators will have to private a warrant to gain access to an email account or provide the target of their investigations the opportunity to challenge their attempt to sieze private emails.